AN UNREMARKABLE looking building hidden in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles is home to a treasure trove of Disney art dating back to the 1920s.

IT sits tucked away in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles. A seemingly unremarkable single-storey building, painted in neutral colours with a few windows and a small car park surrounded by a metal fence.

But inside is an enchanted kingdom, a treasure trove of movie magic.

This is Walt Disney’s Animation Research Library (ARL), home to around 65million items which chronicle the history of the world-famous studio.

The original material, some dating back to the 1920s, ranges from simple pencil sketches and line drawings to lush watercolours, ornate oil paintings and puppets.

The Sunday Mail was invited to take a behind-the-scenes look at the facility, located just a few miles north of downtown LA and formerly known as the Studio Morgue.

Inside, the staff are so careful to guard against ink damage to the artworks that journalists are not allowed to use pens – pencils must be used instead.

And the temperature in the climate-controlled vaults is blissfully cool in comparison to the searing LA heat outside. The 11 huge vaults are also kept at 50 per cent humidity to prevent the artwork from drying out.

But it’s not just a storage facility – the staff of 22 includes archivists, restorers and technicians involved in scanning the art into a vast and growing digital archive. Almost 900,000 pieces have been captured on camera since 2010 and the ARL now has a total of four million digital files ready to be viewed or manipulated in any variety of ways.

Character designs, some which never got past the development stage, rough animation sketches, storyboards,backgrounds, pastels, plasterwork and models, to name just a few, are contained in the vast and varied ARL collection.

The films which the pieces represent include some of the most iconic titles in cinema history such as Snow White, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast and Lady and the Tramp.

Our visit was scheduled to coincide with the special re-release – 55 years on from the original – of Sleeping Beauty on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow.

It also coincides with last week’s release of Disney’s latest Hollywood blockbuster Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie and named after the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty.

When the original was completed in 1959, Sleeping Beauty was described by Walt Disney himself as the “ultimate in the art of animation”.

It took six years to make at a cost of around $6million – the equivalent of around £30million today and a colossal sum in the 1950s.

The 75-minute film, adapted from Charles Perrault’s version of the medieval tale, used one million drawings created by more than 300 artists and artisans.

At the time, paintings and other pieces from the film were shown in major US museums as the finest examples to date of the art of animation.

But cartoon artwork was not always so highly prized by scholars – or even by the studios who paid for it.

Many considered it as little more than disposable technical drawings and sent them to landfill after a film had been completed and the artwork had served its purpose.

Disney took a different view, however, and opted to retain and preserve such pieces – in doing so, building up the resource contained today in the ARL.

Doug Engalla, a member of the research team, said: “We have art from one of the early Alice comedies from 1927, which is our oldest piece.

“And work is being done to rehouse art from the Skeleton Dance, which also dates to the 1920s.

“We have a priority list for material being digitised, based not just on popularity but on requests to our research team from other departments in the company.

“The target is to digitise everything eventually – although I think that would involve my kids or grandchildren working here.

Disney's Sleeping Beauty - Artwork guide sheets for Princess Aurora

“It’s impossible to put a value on the whole collection – it’s priceless. The value is in the faces or artists who see the work and are inspired by it.”

Fox Carney, the facility’s manager and resident historian, said: “We treat the art like museum pieces. People who handle it wear white gloves as oil from their hands could mark the pieces.

“We have original art from Sleeping Beauty from the 1950s and obviously that is a very important part of the collection, especially now.

“The artwork from that film is beautiful, inspired by a range of influences including pre-Renaissance artists, Persian tapestries and gothic art.

“Walt Disney wanted Sleeping Beauty to be like a moving illustration. It took a week to 10 days to finish the painting for just one background scene.

“Artists would produce one single ‘cleaned-up’ drawing a week because of the exacting standards.

“There were clear instructions on detail such as when to use the tip of the pencil and when to use the side of the tip. The artists were masters – Marc Davis, for example, drew on medieval art influences for his drawings of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.

“He originally went for red and black for her colouring but, after consultation, went for purple as it was felt it gave a better balance.

“The raven was introduced to give Maleficent a sidekick to interact with – someone to tickle or touch or talk to.

“We can also see from the art we have that the fairies – Flora, Fauna and Merryweather – originally had antenna but these were removed to make the fairies appear more human.

“There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of art here at the ARL from Sleeping Beauty alone. Once we digitise it, we should know exactly how many.

“Our team spent 18 months on that film alone, going through the sketches and putting them in order.”

Fox added: “The ARL is a well-spring of creativity for the rest of the company. We became known as Disney’s secret weapon as most of the other animations firms didn’t keep their artwork.

“Animation may be done using computers now but the pieces we have are as relevant as ever.

“Artists want to see how a character was drawn, how to make it work. They want to ask, ‘how did they draw that line?’ or be inspired by the colouring.

“We aren’t open to the public and we don’t let too many outsiders in – although Angelina Jolie is more than welcome if she wants to come into check out the drawings of Maleficent.”

Sleeping Beauty is out now on Disney Blu-ray, DVD and to download. Maleficent is in cinemas now.